


lessons of the sacred lands

by Serie11



Category: Horizon: Zero Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Compliant, F/F, Rost being Done with everything, Slice of Life, Slow Burn, Young Aloy, like vala doesn't come into the fic for a while
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-26
Updated: 2017-09-29
Packaged: 2019-01-05 13:05:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12190524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serie11/pseuds/Serie11
Summary: Rost has faced challenges that he thought would break him - having his mate and daughter killed, leaving the Sacred Lands, and then coming back - but this is a challenge that seems insurmountable, even to him:Raising a young child.This is especially hard when Rost thinks Aloy runs on less than zero sleep, can fletch arrows faster than him at age six and has a tendency for getting involved in every single incident in the Sacred Lands.





	1. Chapter 1

The sun wasn’t up yet, but its soft light had begun to illuminate the clearing outside the house.

_Thump_.

Rost sighed. The sun mightn’t be awake yet, but his young charge was. Aloy seemed to delight in getting as little sleep as possible and taunting him with her youth.

He pushed back his furs and sat up, rubbing his face over his hands. On mornings like these, Jenna used to –

He pushed the thought of his fallen mate to the back of his mind. Breathe. Ever since Aloy had come into his care, he’d been forced to look back on the past and see how much time he’d spent wallowing in his misery after coming back from the Cursed Lands. Perhaps that was why the Matriarchs had given him the girl. It forced him to look outside himself.

He pulled on his thick coat and boots, and pushed his door open. The main door was open, letting in the draft that woke him up. Outside it was freezing, and snow covered the ground thickly.

“Aloy!” he yelled, spying her footprints running through the otherwise unbroken snow. She wasn’t wearing shoes, which was something that he’d been trying to drill into her head for the last few months. Now that she was up and about and was starting to make her own decisions, he had to guide her as to what might be the wise ones. Such as not getting sick from running around barefoot in the snow.

“Rost!” Aloy yelled back happily. Rost heard a slither of snow and then another _thump_ as Aloy landed in the large snow pile right outside the window. “Look what I made!”

Aloy scampered around the side of the house, and Rost heard her running over the roof. Getting to the top, she sat down and then scooted forward until her momentum pushed her downwards, and she slid, laughing happily, down the side of the roof to land in the snow pile.

“That’s enough,” Rost said, grabbing the back of her shirt and pulling her out of the snow. Aloy complained at him while he dusted her off, but she happily sat in front of the fireplace while he kindled it. He found her shoes and fetched the blanket off his bed to throw over her.

With the fire crackling merrily in the fireplace, Rost bundled his charge up and sat her in front of the fire. “Do you want some tea?” He asked.

“Is there any berry tea left?” Aloy asked, already sounding like she’s about to fall asleep.

There was a tiny bit of berry tea left, so Rost put the last of it into a cup for her. For himself, mint. It reminded him of older times – it was Jenna’s favourite – and was usually easy to find.

While the tea was steeping, he went outside to fetch the boar that was left over from his hunt yesterday. He’d crafted a large box out of lancehorn machine parts and half buried it in the ground – he found that it was quite good at insulating the meat and keeping it cold, especially if he doused it in chillwater every now and then.

Inside, he began chopping up the last of the boar. Aloy scurried out of her blankets and dug out the stew pot, and went outside to fill it up with clean snow, leaving the door open again. Rost shook his head fondly.

Together, they sipped their tea while Rost added some salt and herbs to the stew. Aloy, as curious as ever, questioned him about every one. Rost told her, and let her have a few leaves to taste by themselves, most of which she screwed up her nose at.

“What are we going to do today?” Aloy asked excitedly, once he’d put his herbs away.

“There’s no more of your tea, so we could try to find a redberry plant,” Rost mused. “And this is the last of the meat, besides the smoked stores. We’re fine on plant food stuffs, but you’re growing so fast I think you might need more clothes soon.” Truly, he thought it might be because she wore them all out that he needed to keep replacing them. Were all children this active?

“Can I get a blue one this time?” Aloy asked, touching the stripe of blue on her current shirt. “It’s my favourite.”

“Blue isn’t a particularly easy pigment to find,” Rost warned her. He didn’t make her clothes himself – instead, he traded with another outcast who lived in the ravine close by.

The outcasts had their own sort of community, even if Rost had never exchanged words with any of them. Everyone had a skill, and they helped each other out when it was needed. Rost was particularly good at hunting, both animals and machines. He traded for most of his yearly supplies in the months leading up to winter, when everyone wanted to stock up on food.

Now that winter was howling outside their door, fresh meat would be welcomed by some. Grata only had her tent for storing food, so he always made sure to drop by and give her some of what he caught. She’d taken the front two legs of the boar he’d caught yesterday.

Jom would know who had blue dye. He was the go to contact between the outcasts when they wanted something. But Rost wouldn’t break the taboo of talking to another outcast. So, if he found some blue for Aloy, it would be luck, and nothing else.

_All Mother give me strength,_ he thought to himself.

Outside, the clouds were gathering. Rost frowned, and Aloy poked her head above the window sill to look outside.

“Is there going to be a storm?” she asked.

“It appears so,” Rost replied. “We can look for redberry leaves for you when it’s over. Until then, we should fortify the house.”

“Okay,” Aloy sighed. She enjoyed running far more than digging up snow to try and barricade their small house.

“Winter’s nearly over,” Rost tried to reassure her. Aloy was waking him up earlier every day, so the sun was rising earlier. Spring was on its way.

“If you say so,” Aloy said doubtfully. Rost ruffled her hair. She’d told him she wanted to grow it out longer. She hadn’t said who she was trying to imitate, but since Rost had short hair, he was afraid that she had been spying on the Nora again, even after he’d told her not to.

“Let’s not waste any time,” he told her, and made her put her shoes on again before they stepped outside and got to work.

* * *

The storm had been raging for days.

Even Rost was beginning to lose things to teach Aloy and ways to keep her entertained. They only had the wood that was left in the house, so most of the time they were stuck in almost complete darkness. Rost had moved both their bedrolls to the main area so they could sleep next to the fire.

Rost was reciting the history of the Nora, and telling Aloy of All Mother and how She always looked out for them. Aloy usually had questions, and when he couldn’t answer them, Rost would switch to stories, and make up new details as Aloy demanded them. He spoke of a hunter who travelled the world, only to find that home was all he desired – he told the story of a goose who fished too early in the spring and could find only fish spawn to eat, and thus doomed all geese to a season of hunger as there was no fish to fill their bellies – and he told stories of Braves, keeping the Nora safe against the machines and threats from outside the Sacred Land.

When she wanted to do something with her hands, he showed her how he fletched his arrows, and she became very good at doing that, very quickly. So he showed her how to mend the holes in her tunic, how to carve a spoon from a bit of wood, and how to tie every knot he knew. Tying knots was a good way to keep her distracted, because when she’d completely tangled a piece of string, he could tell her to unknot it, and it might keep her occupied for another few hours.

The fourth day after the storm had come, Rost somehow manages to wake up before Aloy. He’d shown her how to do a hand stand last night, and she’d spent hours getting it right and then walking around on her hands.

He couldn’t hear any wind blowing. Quietly, he got up and headed for the door. He managed to push it open just enough so he could slip through the crack, and stepped outside.

The sun hadn’t started to rise yet, but the stars were fading from the sky. In the cold light of the moon, Rost looked out to see the clearing they lived in blanketed in a heavy white. A few of the young trees he’d planted a few years ago were bowed over with snow, while their older siblings drooped with the weight of the white on their branches.

Rost took a deep breath, icy clearness filling his lungs. The sky overhead was clear – the storm must have blown itself out. A bird flew overhead, chirping the first call of the day.

Rost closed the door and broke the thick snow as he walked through it. The drifts were past his thighs, so it took him ten minutes or so to reach the end of the clearing. Cautiously, he made his way around the cliff path and found the handholds that led up to the top of the cliff.

Looking out over the Sacred Lands, Rost smiled as the first ray of sun touched his face, accompanied by a warmer gust of air.

Spring was on its way.


	2. Chapter 2

“And this one’s an R.”

“It looks like a P.”

“This R has the extra leg, see? It’s a rabbit, with both legs out, ready to run away.”

“But you said the P was for a pine tree, and it stood straight up with a birds nest at the top! Where does the first leg come from, then?”

“They’re just ways to remember the letter, Aloy.”

“It’s too hard.”

“Not for you it isn’t.”

“You can’t see into my brain.”

“I don’t need to. Learning your letters is something that you should be able to do easily.”

“Well, I can’t. I don’t even see why I need to know how to read, anyway. It doesn’t help you catch dinner or strip a tree of its branches so that I can make more arrows for you!”

Rost sighed. “Writing is useful for many things, Aloy. And I won’t begin to teach you the bow until you’ve shown that you have the ability to remember these letters.”

The young girl scowled at where Rost had drawn the figures into the ground in front of her. “Can we at least do something fun after?”

Rost couldn’t remember Alana being this troublesome about learning her letters, but Jenna had been the one to work with her for most of the day. Years of raising Aloy had shown him how blessed he’d truly been to have her at his side.

For now, he counselled himself patience. Aloy was still young, and her focus flittered from one thing that interested her to the next. She would grow, with time.

“Yes, you can choose something to do this afternoon,” Rost said. “But only if you apply yourself here.”

Determinedly, she put her head down and started scrawling at the ground with her own stick. Rost guided the formation of her letters until they were both tired of it. Rost herded her inside and made her clean her hands and put on her boots, then found some jerky for lunch.

“Can we go down to the valley?” Aloy asked, eyes wide. Rost looked into them and tried not to let the way his heart fell show on his face. She was so _hopeful_ …

“If you’d like. We can look for your redberry tea leaves.”

Rost found everything he would need for the outing, and then convinced Aloy to put her shoes back on. He closed the door to their cabin and followed the bright spark of Aloy’s hair as she ran towards the downwards path that led into the valley.

Someday, Rost would carve handholds into the cliff that their house overlooked. It would make an easier path down into the valley, and a more direct one – taking the path meant descending into scrapper valley.

With both eyes and ears open, he called Aloy to heel. There were machines down here that she was too young to deal with, and he didn’t want her to fall into a watcher’s path.

Rost dogged her footsteps as Aloy followed the paths to where they’d found redberry bushes the last time they’d been in the Embrace. Sometimes her memory stunned him – he rarely had to show her things twice, and she parroted back information at him as fast as he could dole it out. The one thing she had trouble with was sitting still, but he thought that might just be because she was young.

Aloy happily started pulling leaves off a redberry tree. Rost crouched down beside her and looked out over her bowed head. There were three braves heading down the nearby path, and he didn’t want Aloy to see or interact with them.

Rost kept them in the spot there were in for a long time after the braves have left. Some of the Nora delighted in teasing outcasts out and then blaming the outcast when they spoke to the members of the tribe. Rost didn’t want Aloy to have any contact with anyone who thought she was subpar to another child simply because of how she’d been born.

He had instructed Aloy to trace some letters onto the ground again. She seemed totally focused on the ground, but every letter stroke she would let out a big sigh before slowly dragging her stick through the earth again. Rost let her – by wasting time, she would let the braves get further away from their position.

“Is that it?” she asked doubtfully.

Rost looked over her words, nodding to himself. “Yes, it is. Well done, Aloy.”

She beamed a smile at him, glowing under the praise. “Great! Now that I can do it, we don’t have to bother with all that writing stuff anymore, right?”

Rost chuckled. “I’ll find some actual things for you to read, yes. Now let’s head back to the cabin. We have enough leaves and roots to last us a few more days.”

Aloy sighed, but got up, not bothering to brush the dirt off her pants. Rost watched her fondly as she stomped through the bushes, using her writing stick to poke at anything that interested her.

Rost followed her through the forest, always keeping an eye out for anything, machine or human, that might wonder onto their path. Everything was going fine, until Aloy poked her stick into a crack in a rock she was walking on, and the rock split under her feet, tumbling her down the ridge they’d slowly been climbing.

“Aloy!” Rost cried out as she rolled roughly down the hill. He frantically began looking for a path down for himself. Seeing nothing stable, he trusted in the thick hide of his boots and leggings, and began sliding down the hill himself.

Trying to control his descent quickly became futile. Rost covered his head with his arms and hoped that Aloy’s furs were keeping her just as safe.

At the bottom of the hill, Rost instinctively crouched. They were in scrapper territory now. “Aloy!” he whispered forcefully. “Aloy, where are you?”

He did a quick search of the area, but hills here were small and steep – she could be hidden in any of them, still reeling from the fall.

In the distance, he heard the sawing sound of a scrapper biting into a machine carcass stop.

Fear biting in his throat, Rost ducked into some long grass, scanning the grounds for any sign of Aloy. He was a good tracker, damn it! He backtracked to where he fell, and then looked up the hill for signs of Aloy’s passage. She was smaller than him, so made less of an impact on the environment, but he could still make out impressions in the ground where she had skidded through.

Keeping half his mind on the glowing lights of fast approaching scrappers, Rost headed to where Aloy might have landed. Sure enough, he found her in a small ditch, stunned from the impact. Rost quickly checked her over for injuries. She was bleeding in a few areas, but she hadn’t broken any bones that he could see. He picked her up gingerly, and scurried to the nearest patch of long grass.

It was small, so small that Rost wasn’t sure if they were hidden or not. He kept his head down and checked Aloy over with his eyes, heart in his throat as he imagined all the things such a fall could do to such a youngster. A scrapper walked by, and he held his breath.

The scrapper sent out a call, and its yellow light turned blue again. Rost didn’t breathe until it was out of sight.

“You’re such a troublemaker,” he murmured, brushing a piece of Aloy’s hair out of her face. “Let’s get you home, somewhere warm.”

It’d been a while since he had to carry her like this, but that wasn’t going to stop him today. Rost hiked back up to the path as quickly as he could, giving a wide berth to the place where Aloy had fallen.

She still hadn’t stirred by the time Rost made it back to the cabin, but when he put her down in her pallet, she shifted slightly. He took that as a good sign, and began making a rich broth for her to drink. He wanted her to get all the good food she could as soon as she woke up.

“All Mother give her strength,” he murmured over her. The Goddess would not allow permanent harm to come to one that was so close to Her, but Rost thought that She might send many trials along Aloy’s path. Nevertheless, he knew that his young charge would be fine. All Mother wouldn’t allow it to be otherwise.

“Even so, I will look after you as if She were not watching,” Rost promised lowly.

Aloy slept on, oblivious.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Focus reads 'BOW' when Rost first gives it to her, and Aloy can read it. That was the inspiration for this chapter!


End file.
